Ai-Seon Kuan

M.D., MSc

Cancer Epidemiology Unit, University of Oxford

DPhil (PhD) Student

PLCO (Learn more about this study)

PLCO-252

Jan 5, 2017

Diet and risk of glioma in the PLCO Study

Gliomas are the most common primary central nervous system tumours and are highly lethal. However, very little is known about the risk factors for this tumour. There is some evidence that diet may be associated with risk of glioma but results of published studies were not consistent. We will explore extensively the risk of glioma in relation to dietary patterns/indices, major food groups, macronutrients and micronutrients in the PLCO cohort, and compare the results with the NIH-AARP cohort and the UK Million Women Study cohort. Hazard ratios and 95% confidence intervals for glioma by dietary factors will be estimated using Cox proportional hazard models with attained age as the underlying time variable, adjusted for total energy intake, race/ethnicity, education, marital status, height, body mass index, alcohol consumption (except for the analysis of alcohol), smoking, hormone replacement therapy and reproductive factors (in women only) and other dietary factors. All analyses will be stratified by sex.

This study is suitable for the PLCO cohort because detailed prospective information on demographics and diet was collected from study participants of both intervention and control arms on the Baseline Questionnaire (BQ) at baseline and on the Diet History Questionnaire (DHQ) at about 5 years into the trial, respectively. Further, incident cancer is ascertained actively and reliably in this cohort and a sufficient number of glioma cases have been recorded during the follow-up period.